“Put her in the house. I’ll get up there somehow.”
He understood what I was saying, giving me a curt nod. “Harley will get over it. I’ve done worse shit.” He walked around back and then returned with my crutches, setting them alongside my door. “I was with you all night,” he warned, reaching in to get his sister.
He cradled her carefully in his arms and traveled up the stairs. Her face was wide open. It was small and wounded, making me think of someone defacing something perfect to make room for all of the imperfections they suffered from.
I took my crutches and positioned them under my armpits. Taking a deep breath, I pushed to my left leg. The full brunt of my weight increased the pressure on my wounds. Pain overshadowed my rage. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to place my crutches down so I could swing my body forward. Landing on my left leg was jarring. My eyes blurred, and my stomach turned. It didn’t help that the front lawn was soggy. By the time I made it to the stairs, Bach was already coming down empty handed.
He didn’t comment nor did he acknowledge me. He simply got in his truck and drove away, leaving me staring up in fear at the twenty stairs. I tried to convince myself I’d been through worse things. That one time my old man came home with his blood full of whiskey and laid into me until I couldn’t walk. Bach had brought me bowls of cereal until I could make it out of my bedroom. When my Mom lost all her money at the casino in Houston. I’d been too small to understand she wasn’t mad me as she wailed on my face. She was mad at herself, at her life, but she’d been beating me, and that’s all I understood. Still understood.
When I found out Whitney was pregnant, I spent a lot of time thinking of everything I wouldn’t do to my daughter. No matter what Aubrey did I would never hit her. I would never leave her hungry, or leave her on her own; if my parents had done it I would do the opposite. I grunted in pain, which kind I wasn’t sure; emotional and physical bombarded me from all angles.
I paused on the fifth stair and watched the waves roll in, black on black, with the moon shimmering silver. Maybe Whitney keeping her away from me was a good thing. I had nothing to give my kid but what I had, and unfortunately that was nothing but bloody wounds and scars. The realization that she was better off without me increased the pain until my body was flooded with it.
By the time I made it up the stairs my coming home was obliterated. It felt as if I hadn’t even left. I didn’t go to the army, I didn’t learn the taste of blood, and I didn’t have my life unfold before my eyes. My baby was gone. My girlfriend was with my best friend, and come to find out he had a sister.
“Welcome home,” I forced out, closing the front door.
The beach house looked different. Gone was the mess, the booze, and the empty condom wrappers. In its place were gleaming wooden floors, new furniture, and a kitchen that shone. There was a play area in the corner for Aubrey where my fish tank had been. Amongst this new space I stood there. Sweat poured down my face and soaked my shirt. I smelled like musk and ass. There was no room for me.
I shouldn’t be surprised. You had to make room in this life, and if there still wasn’t enough, you spread your body out and took shit for finding your place.
It was unsettling how smoothly I transitioned. One car ride and I was back to the place I’d run from my entire life.
To make matters worse, I couldn’t even run. My leg throbbed unbearably as I forced my body across the living room to the couch. Taking a seat felt more painful than relieving. I settled in the supple leather and kept my knees bent, doing my best to remain motionless.
After the pain calmed, I didn’t move. The sounds of the house began to penetrate the painful haze. The fridge whirred on, creating a soft buzz in the back of my brain. The beach was roaring in the background. And on the edge of all of that, I heard the distinct sound of whimpering. Soft feminine moans that sounded displeased and afraid.
“Hillary?” My deep voice broke the quiet of the beach house.
She didn’t respond. The whimpers continued, these delicate mewing moans that felt terrified.
“Damn it.” I grabbed my crutches from where they were leaning on the side of the couch and struggled to push to a standing position. Once upright, I shuffled to the hall, taking a short break before continuing. My bedroom door was closed, but Bach’s was open.
From my spot I could barely detect Hillary’s feet. They were small and delicate, her toes twisting in the sheets. Her skirt had ridden up, revealing her legs and panties. She wasn’t tall, at least not lying down. Her legs were thick. The kind I grabbed on to and held while I pounded into them. Her hair was the color of the sun. This intense gold that was so solid it warmed the dark room. The blanket lay on the other end of the bed, tossed in the midst of her nightmare. As she flailed, she tossed her head from side to side, giving me small glimpses of her face. Deep down inside of me, in a part only Harley ever touched, I had to admit she was the kind of gorgeous women envied. The kind of gorgeous bad men fell for, good men wanted, and then men who knew they could never have it.
And then there were men like me who would undoubtedly damage her. I would do to this girl what I had done to all others. Even to Harley. And though a part of me wanted to do just that, to show Bach he couldn’t have two good women, another part of me pointed out the bruise on her eye. She’d suffered enough. She didn’t need some dickhead like me to add to her wounds.
I’d lost her as soon as I found her.
Her whimpering suddenly became a word. “Stop,” she pleaded. A tear trailed down the side of her face, and her lips parted, making way for her heavy breathing. “Please,” she moaned, her hand lifting off the bed.
I looked around helplessly. She was in the middle of the bed. I couldn’t get close enough without compromising my leg. But the moment she was crying and begging, my damn heart gripped in my chest. I couldn’t remember if that had ever happened before. It wasn’t the same feeling I got when I looked at Aubrey, or even Harley. Both of them had never been broken.
Bach better maim the son of a bitch.
I grunted as I entered his room, edging closer. I leaned my right crutch aside on the end of the bed, ignored Harley’s panties on the floor, and then rested my left knee on the end of the mattress. In this position my right leg supported me, causing an acute burning to flood my system. I grabbed her foot and gave it a shake.
“Hillary. Wake up.”
Her foot tried to free itself from my grip and her moaning deepened. Her movements, however, were strange. They were slow and contorted, as if fear and reason weren’t working together. If she were drugged she still might be. She exhaled and relaxed onto her back; breathing labored and eyes closed.
My resolve to turn Hillary into a lesson began to waver indefinitely. How could Bach leave her with me? She looked fragile and breakable. This delicate thing twisted in the sheets. I shouldn’t be left with something so precious. I broke things. I damaged them. I took the good and made it bad. Not on purpose, at least not every time. If good things were common, I wouldn’t miss Harley so damn much, and women like Hillary wouldn’t be so special.
If I left Hillary to sleep, she’d suffer. If I woke her up, she’d be left with the nightmare she endured when she was awake. I should be able to better understand these options. That was my life. Choosing between two choices I shouldn’t be choosing from at all. At least asleep she was resting. In Afghanistan, the lack of sleep was just as much our enemy as the opponent. When we were exhausted our brain overcompensated, and more often than not it went to places it shouldn’t in an effort to relieve our reality.
So I shuffled out of the room as quietly as possible and managed to close her door, leaving it open just enough so when she woke she wouldn’t panic. I wondered if she’d been to the beach house before and if she’d ever woken up to a son of a bitch like me.
I smirked when I considered her reaction and then promptly lost my smirk when I sank down on the couch. Having nothing else to do, I lowered my head and closed my eyes, call
ing forth sleep. Of course I should have known better. Between sleep and unconsciousness, I felt my hackles rise and my senses sharpen …
I could smell the threat in the air, the promise of danger. There were abandoned houses all around us, broken down from past bombs. Roofs collapsed on old memories. I often wondered about the families who’d lived in them, but the guilt in my heart forced the thought away. Most of the city had been evacuated, and houses lay in ruin. My unit, consisting of Ryan, Two Finger, Tex, and Spits, hovered around us. The sky was dark, but dawn hovered on the horizon.
“All clear,” Tex said, gun in hand.
I shook my head. All I thought about in those times when it wasn’t about surviving was going home. “We’re not alone,” I informed him, eyes peeled. I could feel someone watching us. Our guns were poised, so that meant he wasn’t faraway. The threat of us was still a threat to him.
“Bullshit,” Two Finger, aptly named for his ability to get women off with both appendages. Tex swore he had a small dick; that’s why he stuck his claim to fame on his nickname. “We’ve looked twice, Dylan. We’re clear. Let’s go back. I’m starving.”
Spits met my eyes. He felt it too. “One more time,” he ordered, spitting some chew onto the ground. “Two Finger, Tex, and Ryan, you keep an eye out. Dylan and I will look this place over. Once we’re clear, the convoy can move through.”
They took off down the road, and Spits and I headed back into the houses, searching for the eyes we felt on us. I scanned the mountains in the distance, but they were too far away for what I felt. I kept looking, ignoring Ryan’s griping. On a rooftop, something moved. If I hadn’t had my eyes peeled, I wouldn’t have caught it at all. A black shadow in the darkness. But it was too late. My reaction was instant. We were over. Shots rang out, and my unit came in to the street. Searing pain exploded in my leg. Pain so brutal I screamed. The smell of blood filled the air. The shouts of my men. Of their lifeless bodies. I met Spits’ cold eyes. They were dark brown. He had a kid at home. He talked about him, wanted Aubrey to be his friend. Blood stained his face and surrounded his body.
His empty stare bored into me. There was no more life in them. My unit lay around me, still and bloody. There was so much blood. It filled the air, made my breaths taste like it.
I could taste their blood all over my face.
In the distance, I watched him take off, and the action chilled me. He thought his job was done.
We were done.
I had little in the way of family. My parents hadn’t truly ever wanted me. I was a mistake they were stuck with. I didn’t miss them. All I ever had was Bach. At that moment, all I wanted was my daughter, my best friend, and the one woman who was supposed to prove the rest wrong.
I wanted Harley at the end.
I had no idea that she wasn’t mine to want anymore.
My screams woke me. Bloodcurdling shouts as I watched my unit fall. My friends. As my blood created a pool around me and the bullets filled the air. Aubrey would grow up without me.
A movement caught my attention. I looked over to find a girl in my living room. She was rumpled, and her cheeks were splotched red, but her hair was the color of the sun, and she was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. She had pale sea green eyes.
Those were Bach’s eyes.
There was an angel in my living room with Bach’s eyes.
And by the look in them, she had fallen.
***
Hillary
It was just a dream.
I stared, stuck on the man in the living room. This was Bach’s place. I recognized it from the few times I’d been here. These were his floors beneath my feet. Those were his walls closing in on me. That was his couch, and on that couch was a man I did not know. Terror shot through me. This awful stomach clenching kind of terror. My knees knocked with it. My hand shot out. I braced myself against the wall.
He’d been screaming, this man. As if someone was torturing him in his sleep. His screams had called to me. His fear met my fear. His sweat shone like mine. I could smell his terror from all the way over here. We couldn’t have possibly been dreaming about the same thing, but at that moment, when our eyes were locked and our surprise mixed with our horror, I knew our fears were intertwined, because I was screaming the same way.
After a few seconds, he cleared his throat and sat up, cringing as he rose. I spied a pair of crutches leaning against the couch and wondered if he was hurt. My body was stiff and my mouth tasted awful. My stomach rolled as pieces of last night came back to me.
How stupid could I have been?
“Don’t cry,” the man said. But, it was more like he ordered it. His rough timbre whipped out at me, causing my tears to burn. He rubbed a hand down his face and then ran it through his warm brown hair, causing its mess to intensify. “Please don’t cry.”
Zane’s smell clung to me. Cigarettes and vodka. I smelled like the horror I almost endured. My body shook. My legs barely carried me across the living room. Who was this guy? He was in Bach’s house, but that didn’t mean he was to be trusted. “Where is Bach?” My voice sounded so unlike me. It was airless, with no weight or body. I was hollow.
He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When they opened, he met mine hesitantly. “He isn’t here. It’s just you and me. Is that all right?” he checked, watching me closely.
“Yes.” I hugged myself and cast my eyes around the room. I felt unlike myself. Before the party, I understood who I was. After it, I had a hard time remembering anything at all but the fear that had taken root in my guts. “Where is Bach if he isn’t here?” I returned my sights on him when he didn’t respond. His unwillingness to look at me made me feel … dirty. Dirty and suspicious. “I want Bach.”
“Bach had something to do. He’ll be back soon. My name is Dylan. I’m his roommate.”
Relief flooded me. “Aubrey’s dad?”
“Aubrey’s dad.” He looked relieved too.
“How soon will he be?” I was on the edge of breaking. I approached the cliff and teetered, looking over as if the fall would not break me. Behind me, there was Zane and his belt. If falling over the edge protected me, then I wanted to freefall into my pain. I could see it at the bottom of the cliff, this carnivorous black hole waiting to drag me down and change me. “I don’t want to change. I don’t want to be different. I was so afraid.” Tears burst through my eyes. “I want Bach!”
“Hillary,” Dylan moaned, as if I was hurting him. He struggled to his feet. I watched as he balanced with his crutches, gritted his teeth, and then began to come for me.
“Bach,” I blubbered senselessly.
“He’s not here. I’m going to have to be enough.” He balanced on his crutches, eyes helplessly roaming over my body like he was trying to figure out what to do. “What do I have to do to get you to stop crying?”
My lungs were too full and empty at the same time. My breaths were leaving me breathless. “Rewind time,” I pleaded, honestly begging this man to go back in time and change my mind. No, Piper. Two simple words would have saved me from the havoc ravaging my insides. “He hit me.” I gave up and fell over the edge, into the consuming fear I felt last night, fear, I dreaded, was permanent.
I ran at Dylan and threw my arms around his neck, clinging to his body harder than I had ever clung to anyone in my entire life. He stiffened, and one crutch fell, forcing him to balance on his right. I wasn’t protected enough. I was still exposed. So I crawled up his body and wrapped my legs around his waist, thinking that if I wrapped my body around him, Zane might not be able to get me again.
Finally, his arm came around me. He held my lower back and breathed into my shoulder. “I can’t rewind time. Trust me,” he said, his voice gruff. “If I could I would.” He fell back onto the arm of the couch and rested there, his breathing labored in my ear. After a few more minutes he released his hold on me and urged me away from his body. “Hillary,” he stressed when I clung to him. “I’m two seconds away from puki
ng all over you. It hurts so bad.”
It was then I recalled many things. One, his crutches. Within my fear I went back to the few times I’d been here with Bach, Harley, Aubrey and Whitney, the mother of Dylan’s child. Dylan was away at war, and they were taking care of his child while he healed in the hospital. The second thing I recalled was the fact that I was wearing a skirt, and I was wrapped around a man like a glove. The last thing was the gruffness of his voice. He was in serious pain. I quickly unwrapped myself from around him and dropped to my feet, mortified but unable to stray far from him. I pressed my hip to his, watching the sweat drip down his face.
“Where are you hurt?” He didn’t look hurt. His shorts went to his knees. His shirt covered his chest. Although his pain could be hidden, like my own.
“Get my crutch.”
Under different circumstances his harsh order would have offended me. In this case, it was welcomed. He knew what to do. With a shaking hand, I retrieved his crutch. After all, I had just crawled up his body and sobbed into his ear. I wiped at my eyes, but more tears followed. My brain was scattered. What did I do? Did I go to the police? Did they already know? How did I get to Bach’s house? I couldn’t remember anything after … after … Zane hit me. The memory was foggy but clear enough for the terror to resurface. I stepped even closer to Dylan, so that both my thighs touched his left one.
I wanted to get as close as I could.
He looked at me once he regained his composure. “Sorry,” he said, taking a deep breath. “On my leg. Too much weight on my leg and it feels like it wants to explode. I didn’t want to tell you to get off …” He let it hang there.
“While I fell apart?” I mumbled, wanting him to hold me again. I felt exposed. I was out in the open. It was cold, and I was going to get hurt. In my gut, I knew the moment I was alone Zane would come back. I stepped even closer to him, reaching out to grab his arm.
Damage Me (Crystal Gulf Book 2) Page 8